WAKE COUNTY, N.C. — As more people move to North Carolina, housing and land are becoming harder to find. It's why farmers are getting high offers for their properties.

What You Need To Know

  • Wake County farmer John Burt says he gets frequent offers from real estate developers for his land

  • Burt runs Iron Horse Farms and has no intentions of selling

  • As more people move to N.C., land is getting sold and farms are declining

John Burt owns Iron Horse Farms in Wake County. He says that he has gotten offers on his land in the past, but now it's happening weekly.​

"I think my ancestors would be shocked that people are offering, 40, 50, 60 thousand (dollars) an acre," Burt said. "I honestly don't think even my grandfather's generation ... would imagine there would be this amount of growth and development that's around us right now.”

The farm has been in his family since the 1750s when the king of England granted them the land. Burt is now the ninth generation who runs a cattle farm and boards horses on more than 700 acres.

He says he's seeing less and less farmland as more people choose to sell.

"As all the farmland close to the cities has kind of gotten gobbled up and put into houses and commercial districts, that kind of left us as the only people left," Burt said.

And even though agriculture is the No. 1 industry in North Carolina, the number of operations in our state is dwindling. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of farms in our state has continually decreased. In 1997, there were 59,120 farms, versus 2017, when there were 46,418 farms.

"I think a lot of people that are selling are people that don't have any kids that want to farm. Or their kids have moved off, or maybe it's kind of their retirement," Burt said. "It's just not something I have really ever considered. For farmers, our greatest enemy is probably what we call the terminal crop ... which is the last crop that will ever be grown and that's houses.”